For me, the best one was submitted right out of the gate by Phil Wala:
I thought it was a very funny way to address the fact that a recastaway occurred in the show. Sherry Jackson played the role of Terry Williams, daughter of Danny and Margaret Williams from the first episode in 1953, "Uncle Daddy". (Surprisingly, for you younguns, debut episodes in those days actually had titles other than "Pilot".) But "Terry Goes Steady" was her final episode in the October 1958 episode "Terry Goes Steady".
The character continued on in the series, however. A year after Terry went off to college, she came back - but now played by Penney Parker. (The episode was the aptly entitled "Terry Comes Home".) I was only a little kid at the time and couldn't watch the show in its original run. I did catch it often in syndication a few years later but I don't think I noticed the change in actresses.
There are plenty of Earth Prime-Time splainins to do as to why recastaways change a character's appearance - plastic surgery is the mundane reason shared with Earth Prime. But there's also alien and android replacements, replicants, imperfect clones, demonic and angelic possession, magical remakes, holographic glamours, and quantum leapers.
The trick for a televisiologist like myself in accepting these changes in appearances is to remember that the audience of the Trueniverse is not seeing the events of Toobworld from the full perspective of the people who live within the TV Universe. We can see the people are different, but the other TV characters can't.
In this case of the two Terry Williamses, there is another option, something a bit more drastic.
With the episode "Terry Comes Home", the Trueniverse audience was no longer watching "Make Room For Daddy" as it existed in Earth Prime-Time. We were now viewing the lives of the Williams Family in an alternate TV dimension, most likely Toobworld2, the Land o' Remakes.
Let's face it - any of those other splainins would betray the reality of the Williams household, even if none of us could relate to the show biz aspect of their family life. That was just a superficial element; the heart of the show was the family dynamic with which we could all identify.
So for the rest of the show's run, we were watching the doppelgangers of Danny and Kathy and the kids in another dimension. However, the show came back in 1970, slightly revamped and now entitled 'Make Room For Granddaddy'.
The premise which kicked it off was that Terry had come back to the family hoping that they would take in her six year old son while she joined her husband wherever he was deployed in his military service. And for that one episode of this single-season series, Sherry Jackson returned to the role of Terry.
So "Make Room For Granddaddy" returns the Williams Family to the main Toobworld fold. (I've dealt with that last year in a post about Terry.)
But it's Phil Wala's excellent caption which got me thinking about a possible fanfic idea - what if Linda Williams had the ability to sense the difference between dimensions. What if she was an omnipresent sentience trapped in a child's body, existing as one being on all planes of reality? The same Linda Williams in the main Toobworld, Toobworld2, in all TV dimensions except maybe Black Tooworld and the Tooniverse.
She would feel the difference between all of those TV realities, knowing that it was a genetic quirk which caused her step-sister's chromosome arrangement to be altered.
That concept and the look of that picture does give me the 'Twilight Zone' willies....
Thanks for the question, Tina, and thanks to Phil for a great caption!
BCnU!
"I have three siblings:
Rusty, Terry, and the other Terry."
I thought it was a very funny way to address the fact that a recastaway occurred in the show. Sherry Jackson played the role of Terry Williams, daughter of Danny and Margaret Williams from the first episode in 1953, "Uncle Daddy". (Surprisingly, for you younguns, debut episodes in those days actually had titles other than "Pilot".) But "Terry Goes Steady" was her final episode in the October 1958 episode "Terry Goes Steady".
The character continued on in the series, however. A year after Terry went off to college, she came back - but now played by Penney Parker. (The episode was the aptly entitled "Terry Comes Home".) I was only a little kid at the time and couldn't watch the show in its original run. I did catch it often in syndication a few years later but I don't think I noticed the change in actresses.
There are plenty of Earth Prime-Time splainins to do as to why recastaways change a character's appearance - plastic surgery is the mundane reason shared with Earth Prime. But there's also alien and android replacements, replicants, imperfect clones, demonic and angelic possession, magical remakes, holographic glamours, and quantum leapers.
The trick for a televisiologist like myself in accepting these changes in appearances is to remember that the audience of the Trueniverse is not seeing the events of Toobworld from the full perspective of the people who live within the TV Universe. We can see the people are different, but the other TV characters can't.
In this case of the two Terry Williamses, there is another option, something a bit more drastic.
With the episode "Terry Comes Home", the Trueniverse audience was no longer watching "Make Room For Daddy" as it existed in Earth Prime-Time. We were now viewing the lives of the Williams Family in an alternate TV dimension, most likely Toobworld2, the Land o' Remakes.
Let's face it - any of those other splainins would betray the reality of the Williams household, even if none of us could relate to the show biz aspect of their family life. That was just a superficial element; the heart of the show was the family dynamic with which we could all identify.
So for the rest of the show's run, we were watching the doppelgangers of Danny and Kathy and the kids in another dimension. However, the show came back in 1970, slightly revamped and now entitled 'Make Room For Granddaddy'.
The premise which kicked it off was that Terry had come back to the family hoping that they would take in her six year old son while she joined her husband wherever he was deployed in his military service. And for that one episode of this single-season series, Sherry Jackson returned to the role of Terry.
So "Make Room For Granddaddy" returns the Williams Family to the main Toobworld fold. (I've dealt with that last year in a post about Terry.)
But it's Phil Wala's excellent caption which got me thinking about a possible fanfic idea - what if Linda Williams had the ability to sense the difference between dimensions. What if she was an omnipresent sentience trapped in a child's body, existing as one being on all planes of reality? The same Linda Williams in the main Toobworld, Toobworld2, in all TV dimensions except maybe Black Tooworld and the Tooniverse.
She would feel the difference between all of those TV realities, knowing that it was a genetic quirk which caused her step-sister's chromosome arrangement to be altered.
That concept and the look of that picture does give me the 'Twilight Zone' willies....
Thanks for the question, Tina, and thanks to Phil for a great caption!
BCnU!
1 comment:
Glad that we could inspire you! Since you mentioned the episode involving Terry's homecoming from Europe all grown up with several international playboys in toe at the airport, I can't help but think that somehow worlds collided and less than a decade later another pretty red head stood at the airport with three jet setter playboys in toe also returning from Europe all grown up. That redhead was Betty Jo Bradley, the show Petticoat Junction, the season five opener Is That My Daughter? For a few scenes, those two TV universes collided!
Great write up Toby!
Tina
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